FAQ's

An organization of the 24 approved medical specialty
boards in the United States that coordinates the activities of its
Member Boards. A directory of all 24 Member Boards can be found in the
Resources
section of this website.

Provides information to the public, the government,
medical professionals, and its members concerning issues involving
specialization and certification in medicine.

No, ABMSdirectory.com is a valuable reference
and research tool. If you require primary source verification for credentialing,
please see details at www.boardcertifieddocs.com.
It is designated by the ABMS as an Official Display
Agent and does provide primary source data on behalf of the ABMS.
For additional details about that service, please contact:
Licensing
Phone: (866) 416-6697
E-mail: h.licensing@elsevier.com

Once a physician has successfully
completed all requirements for board certification, the Member
Board must forward the name of the new diplomate to ABMS in order
for the physician to be included in our publications.
The time involved for transferring
the new diplomate's information varies by board.

ABMSdirectory.com is updated quarterly.
If a change to an existing record or a new record is received after an update, that information will be displayed
in the next quarterly update. Each profile displays the Data as of date in the top right corner for your reference.

DOs (osteopaths) are initially certified by an Osteopathic board. Many choose to maintain their board certifications
and sub-certifications exclusively with those boards. Those DOs will not appear on ABMSdirectory.com. If a DO chooses
to become certified by an ABMS Member Board, their ABMS certifications will be displayed on this site. Their
osteopathic certifications will not be displayed.

You can enter the city and state
in the search form. In order to narrow the list you can select the
Specialty or Sub-specialty (certification or sub-certification)
field to find a list of physicians in your area. You can also search within X miles of a zip code.

NOTE that physicians who have
identified their location as "Clayton" will not be found
under "Saint Louis" or vise versa. Be sure to check
under various cities that may be applicable.

If
your professional information appears on ABMSdirectory.com you may
correct or update your contact information, educational background,
professional and training data, etc., at MyData.BoardCertifiedDocs.com.
However, all certification information must come through your
Member Board and ABMS.

MOC is lifelong training for physicians that was established by each
of the 24 Member Boards in 2000. The guidelines for measuring MOC participation vary by board.
When applicable the profiles of each physician will include the MOC participation status listed under the certification data section.
A link is displayed on each profile (to the right of the MOC data) that provides access to each Member Board's website to review their specific MOC information.
The MOC status is provided as additional information when reviewing the professional profile of various physicians.
However, an indicator of "no" in the MOC section does not affect the physician's board certification status, unless there is
also a label in the certification section that indicates "NOT CURRENTLY CERTIFIED".

A few of the 24 ABMS Member Boards allow physicians to retain their certification
in a sub-specialty with an expired general certification. For example, a physician's profile can list the Internal Medicine
general certification as NOT CURRENTLY CERTIFIED but also display one or more sub-specialties without that message, indicating it is current.
In this example the physician is still board certified. AMERICAN BOARD OF INTERNAL MEDICINE originally certified 1994
CERTIFICATION(S):
Internal Medicine NOT CURRENTLY CERTIFIED
SUBCERTIFICATION(S):
Critical Care Medicine

The following boards do not require physicians to maintain a general certificate in order to maintain subcertifications.

As you may have discovered the Sub Certification drop down menu on the Search screen
includes Critical Care Medicine and Internal Medicine-Critical Care Medicine. The American Board of Emergency Medicine (ABEM)
partnered with The American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) to provide their diplomates with the option to participate in Critical
Care Medicine fellowships and then take the Internal Medicine-Critical Care Medicine exam administered by ABIM. The certificate title
for this subspecialty indicates the administering board. Other boards offer certification in Critical Care Medicine and they administer
their own exams.
For a list of the boards that offer the Critical Care Medicine subspecialty, please refer
to the Resources page and click on the Certificates Offered by Multiple Boards link. Details are in the paragraph at the
top of the PDF. To receive search results that include both subspecialty titles, simply select Critical Care Medicine or
Internal Medicine-Critical Care Medicine from the Sub Certification drop down menu. The search results will be the same when searching on
either certificate name. There are over 10,000 records in our database with the Critical Care Medicine or Internal Medicine-Critical Care Medicine subspecialty. In order to receive accurate and
a smaller quantity of results you will need to include other criteria on the Search page.